Member-only story
11.10.20
I have arrived again at my yearly day of renewal. For many years, I have written on this day about the meaning I extract from November 10th, the Marine Corps Birthday, and tomorrow, Veterans Day. I feel particularly in need to reflect upon these dates during this year, 2020. My, how much I have learned.
In 1996, after living a twenty-one year life of relative comfort, I enlisted in the US Marines. No major war. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 years in the future, the Gulf War years in the past. My reasons for enlisting then do not matter as much now. Patriotic pride, sense of adventure, a need to prove to myself and others I had grit and tenacity and worth. These desires now appear foggy in the mist of my memory, glazed over by time of work, marriage, raising kids, and getting older. These memories now disappearing as I slow down.
Every veteran I know joined for personal reasons. Lithe of body, supple of mind, we joined to do something: to learn, to fight, to be counted, to go out and go forth. Some performed astounding acts of heroism. Others performed their jobs admirably and efficiently to support those heroes in danger. And as we all should know, some and their families who survived them gave what President Abraham Lincoln called, “the last full measure of devotion.”
